April 19, 2006

Sorting out the Generals

In my mind, only one General counts, at least in this debate, and that is the five star guy, General of the Army, George C. Marshall. About two years ago on a blog I asked Wesley Clark if they still taught Marshall's doctrine at West Point -- and I meant that as a tough question, and he said they did.

I keep trying to push history into this dialogue -- and perhaps this is an opportunity. When November 11, 1918 happened, George C. Marshall was a very junior Lt. Colonel, temp appointment, serving on General Pershing's staff, and responsible for pushing an occupation division or two into the Moselie Valley -- with no planning, and no military doctrine for any sort of occupation. Marshall spent a little more than six months reading the reports from a botched occupation, and breifing Pershing and then passing orders back down the chain of command.

What Marshall was witnessing of course was the rise of the Freikorps in Germany, parts of which morphed into the National Socialist Workers Party (otherwise known as NAZI at a later date) -- and along with historians such as Walter Laqueur (See Young Germany -- late 1950's) he identified the core of the problem. In 1920 and 21 what Marshall was witnessing was the loss of the victory of combat arms because the victors did not know how to restore normal politics.

What's important to comprehend is that George Marshall comprehended this in the early 1920's -- and from his "Major" position he worked to deal with what he understood as problems. He pressured Pershing to do what became the "Hunt Report" -- the history of American Military Occupation 1775 -1922. When he taught at the War College -- he used Hunt as textbook and problems to resolve -- how do you do an occupation and accomplish political objectives? By 1934 he was more influential, and got the Army to commission a drafting commission to take up Hunt, and write a military doctrine and then an Army Manual for how to do it. Between 1934 and 41 it went through five editions and revisions. What happened in Germany post 1945 was according to this 5th revised edition of Marshall's plan and one must understand that is not referenced to post 1948 Marshall Plan matters.

Doctrine: Marshall believed that no officer or soldier who had been blooded in combat should be used in occupation. For Germany in 1945 he trained 6000 officers, about 3500 NCO's and about 120 thousand troops specifically for the "Military Government of Germany" and none of them were combat soldiers. If you look at the charts, the two top folk are Ike and Bradley, but below that, there are no cross-overs. Yep, some transport companies got transferred and so did some engineers, but virtually none of them were "blooded" -- and I would suggest that this insight that Marshall gained watching the occupation of the Rhineland in 1919 by an unprepared. untrained, doctrine lacking but fully blooded American Outfit, is perhaps somewhat equal to what currently serving Generals have encountered in Iraq -- and that they have been encountering it now for three years with no relief in sight.

Marshall's genius was to understand that occupation is a stage that leads to restoration of "normal politics" -- but that occupation had to be a base line -- the error of 1919 was the failure to destroy Freikorps. The error was to partially occupy, and not really comprehend how to restore local and normal politics. Essentially the error was not to clarify the objective of military engagement and required outcome, in political terms. If there is a "Marshall Doctrine" it is you don't engage troops unless you are clear on the demanded political outcome

One has to read the biographies and the documents to understand how this came out of ferment of 20 or so years in a very downsized military of the 20's and 30's and very slow upgrades in the ranks. In the early 30's Major Marshall was still pushing for War College courses in the relevant subject matter.

What really concerns me is the lack of understanding of Marshall's thesis -- that no matter what the consequences of combat, if you have not clarified victory -- and the political aspects of that -- you chance the loss of anything gained in combat. -- Put another way the value of the blood expended in combat depends on the competence of the politicians to arrange the workable future.

Understand here -- this is about Marshall between 1919 and 1945 -- not about the China mission nor about his stints as Sec of State or Defense. This is about analysis and creation of architecture.

My sense is that if more about Marshall were known in the specifics, Rumsfeld would have been long gone. And that's the problem -- bad examples lead to worse examples.

No, you just know the Giant Stature of a George Marshall, and you don't dare nominate a midget. Remember in Marshall's time Stimson was the Rumsfield equal (do you remember Stimson???) Probably not, but that does not comprehend the next years.

It would be very interesting if you could post more details about the Army's occupation manual, circa 1945. At the macro level, I fear that Rumsfeld et al. were only too clear about the "demanded political outcome" -- a non-sectarian, pluralistic Iraq with democratic institutions, checks and balances, and a free market economy, all of which are embodied in the American-drafting Transitional Administrative Law. What they lacked was any sort of coherent operational plan for reaching that objective in the aftermath of the fall of a totalitarian dictatorship that had been in power for 35 years (setting aside that they junked the operational plan that had been developed over a period of ten years by the State Department).

Well done. Concise. Hits the target center. Your use of Gen. Marshall to pinpoint the cause of the political failure of the Iraq occupation -- too much attention to counter-insurgency, and not enough to actual reconstruction -- is right-on. Please do more historical work. You're good at it.

I'd like to make one observation about the failure of the American Occupation Forces in Germany to destroy the Freikorps. You should look into the role of the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Division (MID), specifically its commander in Germany, then Col. Van Deman, and that institution's role in fostering anti-communist political and paramilitary forces in Germany. You will find that the expedience of suppressing "Bolshevism" outweighed the dangers of cultivating the most vicious elements of the Far Right in Germany, including the rise of fascist anti-semitism, an ideology that many MID officers and their British counterparts shared and helped spread back to America and the UK. See, http://www.army.mil/CMH/books/Lineage/mi/ch3.htm

"[At the 1919 Armistice meeting]Sixty CIP (MID) agents, directed by Van Deman, provided security for the American party . . . Meanwhile, Army intelligence personnel accompanied the new Third Army the American occupation force that marched into the Rhineland under provisions of the armistice. On the domestic front, Bolshevik agents replaced German spies as the focus for MID's counterintelligence efforts. In the fall of 1919 a naive MID officer warned that "the situation in the United States [was] . . . verging on revolution."4 [Memo, Col C. H. Mason for Brig Gen Marlborough Churchill, 31 Oct 19, sub: Sinister Inertia in Present United States Situation, MID Documents.] However exaggerated the estimate, it accurately reflected the fears of many Americans who found the world changing too fast for America ever to recover her lost innocence."

After WWI there was little consensus among the allies on what Germany should look like. Neither Britain nor France had any real committment to liberal democracy there. Wilson acted like he did. Fear of bolshevism was rampant and in that context, the Freicorps was seen by many allies to be a counter to Soviet influence. The original death squad option, so to speak.

My point is that Marshall only got one part of the equation. He didn't address the fact that if there is no unity on what the outcome should be, or if it's politically impossible to be open about what the victor actually wants, then the victors can't achieve the clarity and straightforward approach to building a coherent, rational polticial structure for the vanquished.

The occupation of Iraq lacked both unity and transparency. The Bush Administration itself was not unified in what it wanted from Iraq. It's policy making on occupation was a political ouija board -- pushed around sub rosa by neo-con factions, contractor aspirants and emigre groups. State and Defense fought each other for control of the Iraqi occupation. And none of these groups -- except, perhaps, the Wolfowitzian neo-cons -- really wanted liberal democracy in Iraq. But all of them had to act in public as if that were their goal there.

Marshall was insightful about the need to focus on the political architechture of the vanquished; he was totally clueless about real politics in and amongst the victors. It's easy to say, "you have to be rational in approaching occupation." But it's impossible to accomplish that when the people in charge are neither rational nor coherent.

Kaleidoscope adds an important point to this excellent post. I think it clear that many elements pushing the Iraq War (esp Cheney) did not really want democracy. Greg Palast's article on Jay Garner makes that clear--Garner (who evidently understood Marshall's points) wanted elections within 90 days, but no sooner had he landed than Rumsfeld ordered him home. We wanted the oil and we wanted the reconstruction contracts. We wanted to impose all sorts of "free (i.e., rigged) market" cockamamie stuff, and so Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority did so. But none of this was politics--it was business, economics of a sort. The political architecture received short shrift, since it was all in service of the business aspects. They really wanted Chalabi or another strongman, and are still trying to install Iyad Allawi again.

The "freedom is on the march" stuff may be for Bush's consumption or maybe just for the gullible press and public. it was always about the oil and the contracts and making the Middle East safe for US business.